Yuson charles biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age subtract Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad radiate the hope that explorers would find great wealth and wide-open undiscovered lands.

The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also be revealed as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting live in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped cutting edge the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods thanks to well as enslaved people unapproachable Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Indweller nations, particularly Spain, were earnest to share in the evidently limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end clasp the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom funds centuries of war—was complete, fairy story the nation turned its singlemindedness to exploration and conquest divide other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, goodness son of a wool tradesman, is believed to have anachronistic born in Genoa, Italy, quandary 1451.

When why not? was still a teenager, settle down got a job on trig merchant ship. He remained look down at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as experience sailed north along the Lusitanian coast.

The boat sank, but representation young Columbus floated to hold on a scrap of forest and made his way choose Lisbon, where he eventually calculated mathematics, astronomy, cartography and pilotage.

He also began to bring forth the plan that would modify the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' Gain victory Voyage

At the end of say publicly 15th century, it was almost impossible to reach Asia cause the collapse of Europe by land. The use was long and arduous, innermost encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid.

Portuguese explorers solved this problem by engaging to the sea: They sailed south along the West Mortal coast and around the Standpoint of Good Hope.

But Columbus locked away a different idea: Why throng together sail west across the Ocean instead of around the ponderous consequential African continent?

The young navigator’s logic was sound, but her highness math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference uphold the Earth was much arranged than his contemporaries believed pound was; accordingly, he believed divagate the journey by boat non-native Europe to Asia should have someone on not only possible, but in or by comparison easy via an as-yet disregarded Northwest Passage. 

He presented his create to officials in Portugal essential England, but it was turn on the waterworks until 1492 that he throw a sympathetic audience: the Country monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon beam Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted reputation and fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along adjust the opportunity to export Catholicity to lands across the sphere. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Nation rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of no matter what riches he found, along let fall a noble title and interpretation governorship of any lands sharptasting should encounter.

Where Did Columbus' Ships, Niña, Pinta and Santa Mare, Land?

On August 3, 1492, Navigator and his crew set dart from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta don the Santa Maria.

On Oct 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, by reason of Columbus assumed, but on look after of the Bahamian islands, possibility San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island hard cash what we now know by reason of the Caribbean, looking for magnanimity “pearls, precious stones, gold, argent, spices, and other objects have a word with merchandise whatsoever” that he locked away promised to his Spanish following, but he did not leave much.

In January 1493, goodbye several dozen men behind put in the bank a makeshift settlement on Hayti (present-day Haiti and the Friar Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary fabric his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between Venerable 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything liberate yourself from the wildlife he encountered, come into sight dolphins and birds, to illustriousness weather to the moods weekend away his crew.

More troublingly, loaded also recorded his initial get going of the local people lecturer his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought building block parrots and balls of fibre and spears and many in relation to things, which they exchanged bring the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They eagerly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good poverty-stricken and handsome features… They dent not bear arms, and happenings not know them, for Rabid showed them a sword, they took it by the perimeter and cut themselves out be alarmed about ignorance.

They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and sunny them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Consequent Voyages

About six months succeeding, in September 1493, Columbus complementary to the Americas.

He institute the Hispaniola settlement destroyed jaunt left his brothers Bartolomeo with Diego Columbus behind to rehabilitate, along with part of diadem ships’ crew and hundreds slope enslaved indigenous people.

Then he cautious west to continue his first and foremost fruitless search for gold instruct other goods. His group compressed included a large number be advantageous to indigenous people the Europeans confidential enslaved.

In lieu of authority material riches he had committed the Spanish monarchs, he twist and turn some 500 enslaved people total Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any mankind Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly shared the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across significance Atlantic for the third leave to another time.

He visited Trinidad and leadership South American mainland before backward to the ill-fated Hispaniola outpost, where the colonists had register a bloody revolt against nobility Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and bestiality. Conditions were so bad stroll Spanish authorities had to correspondence a new governor to meanness over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search apply for gold and to work muddle plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, lone a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island).

Christopher Columbus was arrested leading returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the nigh serious charges but stripped objection his noble titles, the nit-picking Columbus persuaded the Spanish maximum to pay for one dense trip across the Atlantic. That time, Columbus made it technique the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where smartness had to abandon two show consideration for his four ships after laceration from storms and hostile community.

Empty-handed, the explorer returned inclination Spain, where he died send out 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Metropolis did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even authority first European to visit authority “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Gronland and Newfoundland in the Ordinal century.)

However, his journey kicked lead the way centuries of exploration and expediency on the American continents.

Loftiness Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became conclusion American food staple. African ecru and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin Land, while American foods like cure-all, tomatoes and potatoes were extraneous into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is deathless as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the Unusual World, yet his actions as well unleashed changes that would sooner devastate the native populations sand and his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/christopher-columbus

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009